What A Personality!

Rhea's personality has been coming out more and more and her personality has been on full display over the past week. It would be impossible to list everything cute thing I think happened, so I'll just include a few of my favorites.

Thanks to Rhea's grandpa (my dad), she is now OBSESSED with grapes. The first evening we were at my dad's he pulled together an unplanned dinner for Rhea complete with pasta, chicken and squash and grapes for dessert. The next day we were back at my dad's for another meal and sure enough, grapes were part of that meal as well. It got to the point where on the last evening we were there, Rhea went over to the fridge and tried to pull it open. My dad and I were standing there with her trying to figure out what she wanted when she reached up, grabbed the bag and handed it to me! We ended up having to buy grapes when we got home and yesterday she ate them 3 times - at breakfast, dinner and after bath!

When we first got out to my parents, we bought Rhea a new booster seat, complete with a tray. We have a travel one that hooks onto a chair, but with her eating so many finger foods these days, we thought something like this would be better for her. Well, I never could have predicted how much she would love this chair! She sat in it for every meal and would head right toward it as soon as she saw that I had food to feed her. What surprised me was that she would actually want to sit in the chair when she wasn't eating and play with her toys! At one point, she was in the chair with her toy laptop on the tray, typing away! She looked like a little professional sitting at her desk!

Rhea's favorite activity: "folding" clothes. This seriously kept her entertained for long periods of time. At my mom's, Rhea found it fun to take each item out of her suitcase one by one, "fold" them, put them in a pile and then put them back in the suitcase. At her GG's house, GG gave Rhea a pile of dishtowels and she had the best time playing with them. She would fold them, lay on them, throw them in the air and laugh. My grandmother and I got the biggest kick out of just watching her. I learned yesterday that this behavior is not saved just for home or family's houses. Her teacher was telling me yesterday that if Rhea is ever fussy, they give her a blanket or two for her to fold and it calms her down every time!

Rhea is now wearing her new size 4 Nike sneakers. Unlike her previous shoes which were soft and more like training shoes, these are real sneakers, just like we wear, just really small. She seems to like them and seems completely comfortable walking in them. She is walking all the time now. They tell me that at daycare she is very careful when she walks since there are so many kids and toys often in her path and they are impressed that she will crawl if there are too many obstacles vs. trying to walk and falling. At home, she walks everywhere. We hardly see that unique one legged crawl anymore.

There is no doubt to me at this point that Rhea is a shy baby. It takes her a long time to warm up to people and until she does, she will not let them hold her and will not let me out of her sight. And over this past week, she saw so many new, unfamiliar faces, I think she was at times overwhelmed. But, by the end, she was giving kisses goodbye to people and would let me leave the room without freaking out. Her cousin Doug was determined to hold her and we worked hard every time he saw her (even bribing her with cake at one point and feeding her dinner). Finally, it worked and she let him hold her!

Finally, Rhea has learned how to blow kisses and tried to copy my grandmother when she was giving fish kisses! We still get the full open mouth kisses from her and I am so excited to add these two new types of kisses to the list.